All By Design: A Nikolai Lantsov Series

Just a Short Time Chapter Seven: the slowest way is never loving them enough

this time: Nikolai Lantsov grew up in a facsimile of a normal life, knowing a falsehood of a love from parents who faked everything but their anger. It should ruin him, but instead, it makes him something better. Something strong.

this chapter's song: high infidelity

Nikolai Lantsov is starting to think that love might not be real after all. He has been looking for it for quite some time now, and it has yet to turn up anywhere. He's a little kid used to things making sense, so he's checked all the usual places: in the schoolyard, hidden in the pockets of his father's coat, behind his lids when he squeezes his eyes shut until it hurts.

It has never occurred to Nikolai that love would not exist. It was one of those precepts that always came true, like cherry liquor turning his mother's cheeks red or the clocks in his fathers workplace always counting at half speed while he sat there and waited for the hour to turn. Love was always there. It always would be there.

Or so he believed, at least, until he looked up one day and realized that there was something missing from his life, a common thread snipped in two that had once brought everything together in such neat, even stitches. The sun doesn't seem to shine as brightly anymore, that must be why. Colors that Nikolai swore were vivid when he was growing up are washed out now. Some reason must appear to force it all to make sense.

Love, then, the love is gone. Nikolai doesn't see it in his brother's face when Vasily looks at him, if it was ever there at all. At least his parents still have each other. His child's eyes see nothing amiss there, but the wool over his gaze is still quite strong as of right now, a few years from childhood ending and reality sinking in.

He'll still fight for it, though, just in case. His mother always used to call him that, her little fighter, every time Nikolai said something remotely heartsick or confident. He used to think it was a good thing. He's not so sure anymore.

Years later, when Nikolai grows up and out of his skin and subsequently back into it, he'll think back to that gradual realization. He fought for love as long as he could, but it wasn't meant to be. Nikolai opened his eyes one too many times and he started seeing life as it really was. His father said that was a good thing. Accompanied by a too-strong slap on the back, Nikolai choked on his aspirations of being proved wrong and let the past die with his breath.

At that moment, though, Nikolai was young and armed with the determination of thousands. He fought hard, he always did. Letting go is forever a little harder than it should be. The surrender slips over you in bits and pieces, ignoring the way you keep rallying the energy needed to keep going, and then all at once it's over you, letting down your guard, dropping your sword to the dusty ground.

The change came over him in fractures and fragments. Nikolai watched his parents falter in their lies, or maybe that was just because he stopped looking at the world through glasses tinted such a strong shade of rose. He started seeing where the ends didn't meet in how his parents loved each other, and then the truth was all around him and there was no going back.

Nikolai never had much time for paparazzi rumors. Vultures armed with cameras will shout what they will and whisper what they won't. A thousand lies spread per minute, but some of them are true, that's what chance likes to prove. One word amongst hundreds must be real. One secret about his parents is true, and it's the one that concerns Nikolai himself.

Is Nikolai really a Lantsov? As a child, he had never questioned it. His father placed a hand on his blond hair, not the skin, then proclaimed it just as valuable as gold. Sometimes Nikolai thinks the metal would have served his father a better purpose, but even the famous actor, the patriarch of the silver screen's best family, couldn't have everything he wanted.